Special Project

Big Sky, Past and Future

By Jonathan Weber , 8-26-09

For a couple of decades after Chet Huntley opened Big Sky Resort in 1973, the Southwest Montana ski destination was an odd anomaly – not quite developed enough to compete with the Vails and Aspens of the world, not quite big enough and charming enough to have a strong sense of place, and not quite close enough to anything to be a likely spot for intensive real estate development.

But over the past ten years, all that has changed. The opening of Lone Mountain Tram in 1995 put Big Sky on the map as a must-visit for serious Rocky Mountain skiers. The development of Moonlight Basin added diversity and critical mass to the skiing and other recreation opportunities – and a lot of nice property to the second-home market. The launch of the Yellowstone Club in 1999 brought cachet, rich people, and lots of attention (some good, and some not so good).

When the global real estate bubble began to inflate in 2003, Big Sky exploded. Home values tripled over the following four years, and contractors and tradesmen – some 5,000 a day at the peak – flooded in from Bozeman and elsewhere to build condos, commercial centers, and ultra-fancy houses for the ultra-rich.  The Meadow Village and the Town Center and the Mountain Village – the three separate commercial complexes in the valley – remained modest by big-time resort standards, but with more jobs, more people and more money, Big Sky was growing up.

The real estate bust, of course, changed things once again. The construction business all but stopped. The Yellowstone Club, after gorging on $375 million in loans, went through an ugly bankruptcy, many aspects of which are still playing out. Moonlight Basin and Spanish Peaks, another ultra-high-end development, were suddenly teetering, and their future remains uncertain as they struggle with their own heavy debt loads.

The iconic Lone Mountain Ranch was sold to a vacation club, which then promptly collapsed, leaving that property in limbo as well. Big Sky Resort, owned by the Kircher family, is in many ways bigger and better than ever, but it too took on debt to upgrade, and now desperately needs to keep visitors coming in the door even in the face of a bad economy.

Yet even as the economy has tumbled, the sense of community in Big Sky has, if anything, become even more solid. There’s still little agreement on the long-running issue of whether to incorporate as a town. But the new high school, the product of years of labor by a handful of highly committed local residents, will open next week. The financial woes that have afflicted almost everyone have brought a greater connection between members of the exclusive resort developments and the local citizenry. Big Sky, in short, has become a real place, with a lot of community pride, and the many uncertainties about the future are mostly taken in stride.

Over the next ten days, NewWest.Net will publish a series of stories about Big Sky, past and future. This project is first-of-its-kind collaboration between NewWest.Net and the University of Montana School of Journalism, and was carried out by a group of 13 students. Some are traditional text stories, some are video stories, and they will all be tied together on the Web.

For the first installment of the project, a story and a video about the history and current financial predicament of Lone Mountain Ranch, click here.

For the second story, about the question of incorporation and governance in Big Sky, click here.

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